Most
of the tales are based on Flores’ recollections of four-plus years in the
mid-1970s living in La Joya – fictionalized as La Perla – a village about 20
miles north of Socorro. A few other tales are set in southwestern New Mexico,
San Francisco and Tomé.

The
characters who populate the stories are real people, though their names have
been changed. Older La Perla townspeople are sometimes at odds with the younger
self-identified “freaks” (aka hippies) who dropped out of mainstream society
and moved to the village.

Through
the eyes of Flores, himself a freak, the tales are insightful portraits of
village life. They are at once personal, entertaining and sociological.

In
the tale “TV in La Perla,” the author tells how he arrived in town with
unwanted worldly possessions from a divorce. One possession was a TV, the only
one in town. Soon the TV was on day and night and drew crowds. Flores couldn’t
cope.

But
it did get him to speculate about what his fellow freaks really wanted by
distancing themselves from the big city and from thoughts of the Vietnam War
and President Nixon. Or maybe these dropouts didn’t even know for sure what
they wanted.

Flores
finally solved the TV dilemma: It ended up in a bathtub. The tale “Feast!”
tells of two annual parties for freaks in La Perla.

The
Spring Equinox celebration began in the evening with music, dancing, drinking
and marijuana smoking. It attracted people from towns along the Rio Abajo such
as Polvadera, Veguita and Las Nutrias, as well as freaks from Socorro,
Albuquerque and from as far north as Dixon and Taos, Flores writes. The other
major party was at Thanksgiving. It was a daytime, dinner-centered event and
was more contemplative, as he put it.

In
the tale “La Perla People,” Flores concludes that La Perla’s freaks probably
just wanted to be left alone. “We had a little island we lived in and were
happy there,” he writes. Overall, he recalled La Perla’s freaks as a “stream of
misfits and discontents who would come, move into an empty house, stay for two
or three months, sometimes longer, and then leave.”

Life
was not all love and peace during their stay. There were relationship disputes,
emotional turmoil and moments of anger, he writes.

The
freaks eventually returned to the world they had rejected. “Ultimately, I think
we all learned that it is possible to live in modern society without feeling
trapped,” Flores explains.

He
had taught at the University of New Mexico and years later retired from
teaching at Central New Mexico Community College. Flores also wrote “The Horse
in the Kitchen, Stories of a Mexican-American Family,” a work based on the life
of his father. A Spanish language edition is planned.

Flores
died in 2017 at age 77. His widow, Geri Rhodes, edited “Tales from La Perla.”

“He was a homebody,” Rhodes said of
her late husband, “and … could spend a lot of time in his study just thinking,
so much so that somebody once gave him a T-shirt that said ‘Lost in thought –
Send out a search party.’ The best way to know who he was would be to read his
poems and moral tales …” Several poems are in “Tales from La Perla.”

Review of Tales from La Perla

by Peter Chase, singer, songwriter, colleague, friend

28 June 2019

Ralph Flores’s Tales from La Perla is a collection of
short prose pieces about the author’s time in
La Joya, NM, which he renames La Perla (The Pearl) for the book. Published posthumously by Geri Rhodes,
Ralph’s wife, the pieces recount Ralph’s time in the early 1970s, living in a small
community of people who, like him, were searching for a simpler and more meaningful
existence, less focused on materialism
and more focused on self-sustainability and the rhythms of nature. The residents were varied. Some, like Ralph, were academics who had
tired of that life. Some came from
well-to-do backgrounds; some were fleeing the law. But all considered
themselves “freaks,” not “hippies” (an important
distinction) and were searching for an alternative to the mainstream madness.

For readers who grew up in
the 60s, there is much here to relate to.
For younger readers, it may seem like a magical, mythical time, and, as
Ralph tells us, in many ways, it was.
But, as he also warns, “living harmoniously with others can be very
difficult.” La Perla, he writes,
“was a filter which separated those who truly wanted community from those
who thought they wanted it, but for their own reasons were incapable of
grasping it.” And indeed, among the
residents, we see examples of pride, pettiness, jealousy — in short, all of
the vices and foibles of conventional, mainstream society. Yet we also see an innocence, a decency, and
a sincere belief in the virtues of community that are very attractive in these
times. We could do worse than La Perla.

Ralph’s prose is a delight,
always lithe and clear, never self-indulgent.
Each piece draws us in, whether it focuses on the dynamics of personal
interactions or how to build a house. Ralph himself alternates in these tales
between being the main participant and an almost invisible narrator.

The last few chapters of
the book take us away from La Perla to San Francisco and Silver City, and
though curious readers might like to know more about Ralph’s eventual exit from
La Perla, they will have to content themselves with what we have: excellent tales, seemingly sprung from a time
capsule, and a handful of finely chiseled poems.

At the beginning of the
book, Ralph writes that the freaks of La Perla truly believed in forming a
community “where people live together, cooperate, and help each other and
even learn to love each other.” He
adds, “We may seem foolish and naive to the pundits for thinking so, but
even now, more than forty years later, I don’t believe we were either wrong or
foolish.”

Reading: “A Father’s Tears” from The Horse in the Kitchen reprint (2019)

Many thanks to Ella Brown for making the flier.

READINGS from Tales from La Perla

May 21, 2019, Tuesday at 6 p.m.

at Bookworks

4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW, Albuquerque, NM 87107

between Montaño and Griegos on Rio Grande

Book Review: Tales from La Perla

Rio Abajo Community Library Leaves

Newsletter of the library in La Joya, NM

January/February 2019 / Volume 7, Issue 4 p. 8

In the 70s, quite a few “hippies” moved into the area, including La Joya, which Ralph Flores dubbed “La Perla,” meaning “The Pearl.” They made quite an impression, and the community made quite an impression on them. One such free-thinking soul was Ralph M. Flores. This book relays the stories about the people and experiences he had during the five years he lived here. Mr. Flores eventually settled in Edge City, but the lessons, memories and pictures of his time in La Joya are wonderful. It is a hard book to put down! We are so pleased that the Rio Abajo Community Library was provided a copy by Geri Rhodes, who took Mr. Flores’ manuscript and had it published. It is available to borrow, and if you want your own copy ($12), contact Geri at geriraf@nmia.com or at PO Box 458, Tome, NM 87060